Albert went into the archive-room, a large apartment on the ground floor of the old castle. The walls were covered, from the ceiling to the floor, with receptacles full of old yellow documents and papers of every kind, many of which were extremely old and would have been of very great interest to the antiquarian. While he was looking among these archives for the old map, a small bundle of letters fell into his hand, which he would have hurled back, in all probability, into its ancient home, like so many others, if his curiosity had not been excited by the address on the outside: "For Baron Harald Grenwitz, at Grenwitz." As excessive discretion was by no means one of Mr. Timm's most prominent qualities, he broke unceremoniously the red tape with which the letters had been bound together, and began to read one after another--an occupation which proved so deeply interesting that he forgot everything else, and did not even hear a carriage, which stopped at the great portal, and caused no small sensation in the château. CHAPTER XII. Oswald had spent the week which had elapsed since the departure of the family in the solitude of a fisherman's village, not far from Berkow, where he had been entirely cut off from all intercourse with the world. How he had got there he hardly knew himself. Since Melitta had been so suddenly snatched away from him, he had been seized with boundless indifference for everything that was not in some way connected with her. She filled his whole soul. In this apathy he had parted even with Bruno quite easily. He acceded to the wishes of the baroness all the more readily, as he longed for solitude in his present frame of mind. Thus he said yes to everything, and when he saw the carriage start with the family inside, he felt as if he had been relieved of a heavy burden. He hurriedly said good-by to Mr. Timm and Marguerite, who remained at home, and flinging a light knapsack, which dated still from his university years, upon his back, he wandered gayly out at the door, like the hero in a fairy tale, without knowing where he was going, or where he was to rest his weary head that night. The sun was burning hot; Oswald remembered that it would be fresh and cool in the forest. He turned off the road, and soon the pine-trees were rustling overhead. The low whispering of the thousand green leaves lulled him into sweet reveries. Dreamily he wandered on till he suddenly came out upon the clearing where Melitta's chapel stood, under the shelter of a broad, branching beech-tree that counted many hundred years.